Why Rahul Dravid is not Chak De! India's Kabir Khan
Memes can tell stories, but we must ensure they tell the stories that deserve to be told.
Chak De! India begins with Indian men’s hockey team playing the finals of the world championships against arch-rivals Team Pakistan. Kabir Khan, portrayed by actor Shah Rukh Khan, is the captain of Team India. India is trailing 1-0 and is about to lose the trophy. Team Pakistan concedes a penalty during the dying minutes of the game and India has an opportunity to stay fighting in the competition. Kabir Khan opts in to shoot the potential equalizer and misses. Pakistan wins the championship.
As India is crushed with defeat, Kabir and a Pakistani player share a handshake. A reporter present at the scene captures this moment in a light of misconstrued narrative – that Kabir is a traitor who intentionally missed the penalty to give Pakistan their victory, obviously because he is Muslim.
Kabir finds himself embroiled in heated debates regarding his loyalty towards his country when the photograph is made front and center across news channels in India. None of his other teammates, who bear an equal share in India’s defeat, receive this barrage of accusations. Kabir is jostled on live television and local sports fans give interviews that fuel this botched-up controversy. It becomes so unbearable that Kabir is forced to leave his neighborhood while onlookers only stand and watch. The walls of his home, like his name, are tainted with gaddar (traitor) as he quietly disappears into obscurity for the next seven years. The movie’s central plot revolves around how he comes back to coach the Indian women’s team, leading them to victory at the women’s hockey world championships.
Among a slew of jingoistic national media that have become commonplace in Indian cinema recently, Chak De! India remains one of my most loved movies that deals with patriotism through the lens of sports and what it may mean in the context of India’s diversity. What attracts me the most about this film is its acknowledgment of the hypocrisy among Indian sports fans who measure one’s contribution to the country based on their faith, gender, or even profession.
In India, we love to talk about the abundance of resources and our multi-faceted dominance in sports, arts, and culture. Yet, only a few receive the privilege of being representatives of a winning nation.
Indian men’s cricket team were finalists against Team Australia at the ICC World Cup in 2023. The tournament was hosted in India and before the final game, the country was swept with feverish anticipation. Team India winning in front of its own people was a moment waiting to be replicated since 2011 when India won the world championships on its home turf. Popular culture did what it does best – build excitement for the near inevitable win and prepare spectators for the rush of adrenaline mixed with national sentiments.
Social media posts citing an analogy between Chak De!’s Kabir Khan and cricket team coach Rahul Dravid went viral on several platforms. India was defeated at that game but ultimately won the world championships in June 2024 for the T20 version of the sport. The posts came back to making rounds in online circles once again. After India finally clinched the title of world champions, it made for a reel-becoming-real moment in history.
Except, it wasn’t.
Anyone would call me buzzkill for what I am about to write next. I think the analogy was fun and not serious, but it misses the point of the movie’s premise.
Chak De! India has layers that range from religious ostracization, misogyny, and the heavy bias that cricket enjoys over all others. The movie’s cinematic universe draws inspiration from incidents common in India’s sporting spheres, but Dravid’s career is not one of them. What Kabir is to women’s hockey is Chak De! is not what Dravid is to men’s cricket in India.
I do not fault us for having a favorite sport and building a cultural identity around it. However, I do want to point out why this analogy is rather tone-deaf even by the standards of harmless, social media memes.
Reel is not Real
The social media posts conveniently miss three important verticals that are central to Chak De! India:
Misogyny
Team India (the underdog) vs Team India (the tournament favorites)
Dravid and Kabir’s religious identities.
Misogyny
When Kabir returns seven years later and volunteers to be a coach for the women’s hockey team, the head of Indian Hockey Association dismisses his offer with the justification that “those women will go on to cook and clean anyway.” So, any investment into their development and coaching would be a waste of time and resources.Later in the movie, the same person refuses to send the hockey team to the world championships, calling their trip off three months before the tournament. He would rather have sponsors turn all their attention to where the money is – the men’s team, as if they weren’t already enjoying a much higher systemic support.
In a subplot, one of the hockey team members Preeti Sabarwal is told by her fiancé, Abhimanyu Singh who is also the vice-captain of the men’s cricket team, that her career as a hockey player and as a participant in the upcoming world championships is not serious enough for her to call off their wedding. He says that her and her fiancé's situations are incomparable because obviously, men’s cricket is a far greater national interest than women’s hockey.
Team captain, Vidya Sharma is torn between her passion as a hockey player and her “role” as a demure daughter-in-law and a dutiful wife.
The Indian men’s cricket team does not have to worry about a lack of sponsors or the BCCI canceling a world championship campaign. How ridiculous would it be if they were to say that Virat Kohli does not need to harbor aspirations as a renowned cricketer because he is going to end up being a doting father and a caring husband anyway?
However, Chak De!’s dabble into the sea of women’s struggles in sports and beyond rings true in situations we have witnessed around us. In 2023, Indian wrestlers came together to call for an investigation into the sexual harassment of female wrestlers by the chief of Wrestling Federation of India. There were attempts at brutal suppression of these wrestlers who demanded dialog with the Prime Minister. Eventually, wrestler Sakshi Malik tearfully announced at a press conference that she was retiring from wrestling, putting her shoes on the table after failing to reach the most important leader of our country. Notably, most of our male cricketing legends refrained from extending support to their peers from an inter-sporting community.
Team India (the underdog) vs Team India (the tournament favorites)
In Chak De!, Team India (women’s hockey) are underdogs in the world championships. They are written off and ridiculed even before they start training. This is the motif that drives the heart-thumping adrenaline throughout the movie. It makes you root for the girls and want to see Kabir win after he was violently denied the national recognition he deserved.
On the other hand, cricket is one of the most watched sports in the world. Indian men’s team is among the top national sides according to the official ICC rankings. Decidedly, the competition to represent the nation is cut-throat for the same reason, but it shouldn’t be controversial to accept that the scale of recognition is heavily skewed in their favor. Any other sporting endeavor in a supposedly multi-talented sporting nation is almost run dry and thirsty.
Team India (men’s cricket) are not underdogs. They are sure-fire favorites in any tournament they participate in. In the world championships of 2023 and 2024, Rahul Dravid was not leading a team of undercut, forgotten, and dismissed players onto the pitch. The team is comprised of heavyweight sportsmen who are deemed national heroes.
When Team India wins the Cricket World Cup, it is a moment of pride that stays with us for decades, their stories get told over tea on random cozy evenings. India reiterates its dominance over the sport and thousands of us gather on the streets to remind ourselves that we are and will always be the best in cricket.
When Team India wins the hockey world cup in Chak De!, it is a surprise. No one saw it coming. They had to go out of their way to create a miracle for themselves. A team of female athletes, with immense talent and potential, that no one believed in until they affirmed their worth through extraordinary means.
Lastly, the men themselves. Rahul Dravid and the fictional Kabir Khan.
Rahul Dravid is one of the most revered and celebrated cricketers in history. He belongs to an era of Indian cricket that produced some of the biggest names in the sport. He was the captain of the team when they made an early exit in the 2007 World Championships. Following this, he and other players were subjected to extreme harassment, physical threats, and grueling media attention. Effigies were burnt and stones were thrown at their homes.
The meme draws parallels between Dravid’s redemption with India’s win in the 2024 T20 world championships and Kabir’s arc in Chak De! – disgraced captains who come back as coaches to lead their respective teams to international glory. However, Kabir’s case has an added layer of bigotry performed by those who express doubt about one’s patriotism if they are a religious minority in India.
How the hate towards Kabir is rationalized in Chak De! – Kabir commits treason for allowing Pakistan to win because he is Muslim. He must have missed the penalty on purpose. He must go back to Pakistan and not be allowed to represent India any longer.
Kabir’s fictional struggles are shared by several Muslim and Sikh players in the country. Indian cricketer Arshdeep Singh missed a catch in a game against Pakistan at the 2022 Asia Cup. India conceded a defeat, and what followed was reminiscent of the events in Chak De! Arshdeep fell victim to massive trolling and online abuse which hit an extreme when he was accused of being a Khalistani.
Cricket is our culture. It is a parameter of our “Indian-ness.” So much so that seven Kashmiri students were arrested under the draconian UAPA anti-terror laws for celebrating Australia’s victory over India at the 2023 World Championship finals. Because you are not Indian enough if your vocal cords haven’t suffered a pull while cheering for Indian men’s cricket.
Likewise, Kabir’s Indian identity was reinstated only after he and his team won the tournament. Anything less would have thrown him back into the cycle of extreme fanaticism that threatened his life in the first ten minutes of the movie. “Women are no less than men!” – the public cheered, but only after the team arrived at the airport with the trophy.
Memes like these may be the least offensive perpetrators but they diminish the othering faced by marginalized and discriminated communities in India. We should be steering conversations around the real problems that plague our sporting fraternities.
Chak De! India illustrates several reel-mirroring-real moments through its characters’ journeys because lived and shared experiences outside the silver screen inspired its story. You will find threads of similarities weaving your life or the lives of the people you know, love, and admire. However, for that, you would have to look underneath the limelight into the hidden corners of unsupported and sidelined contributors to national glory.
That was very good to read, I love the comparison and explanations you did 🔥
This was a brilliant read !!